Garmin Instinct or Polar Grit

Hey, The instinct is a good looking watch but after a year I swapped to Fenix as its a substantially better watch. The instinct is great for general tracking but useless if you want use any navigation functions. its sensors are also nowhere near as good as the fenix. but a big advantage if you go solar, is technically you shouldn't need to charge in in summer at least

I have the standard Instinct and it's great as a general watch, tracking etc. What he said 😂^^

I have the standard Instinct

I still have one I'm willing to post for £50. About time put it in the classifieds!

I've got one of the original instincts (you can pick them up for £50-£60 on ebay).

It's big selling point, even the non-solar variation if you pretty much never have to think about charging it. It lasts about 3-4 weeks as a watch, a couple of weeks if I log my commutes, and a week if I log two or three, 2-3 hour rides on it as well.

It's also nigh on as indestructible as a watch could be with a big raised bezel.

I'll probably upgrade to an instinct 2 at some point to get garmin pay.

Obviously it's not a £400 watch that will make standalone phone calls, play music, voice activated, color maps etc. It's pretty much limited to notifications and what you'd get as control on your phones lock screen, so play/pause/skip spotify rather than "hey siri.....".

TL:DR - it's 95% of the functionality of a smart watch, with 20x the battery life.

I have Grit, it is very much sports/outdoor watch with very few smart features. I'm not really familiar with Garmin range but what I have read from dcrainmaker reviews newer Forerunner series has much larger number of features compared to Grit and Polar watches in general.
That said, no issues with my Grit over past 2 years, seems quite accurate in GPS and optical heart rate recording has been ok in moderate exercise.

Big fan of My Instinct Solar (had it since August, bought on special offer).

but a big advantage if you go solar, is technically you shouldn’t need to charge in in summer at least

IME you can sort of run it on sunshine if you keep it in power save mode (turns all the sensors and phone connectivity off basically) and make sure it's out and in direct sun as much as possible on a sunny day, but then there's very little difference between that and a tough solar G-shock, and in winter, especially if you don't work outdoors all day, you won't be running it exclusively on solar...

In real life, if you use it as intended; for tracking HR, for getting notifications from your phone, and obviously for recording rides/runs/walks/swimming/etc with GPS you'll use the battery more. But it's still got staggeringly good battery life (when I compare it to my other Garmin GPS devices)...
You'll still get a solid couple of weeks out of it in the depths of winter with mixed smart watch, sports tracking use. On a full charge I reckon it'll record up to ~24hrs, not that I do anything that needs that, but back to back days of riding (say 2x8hrs) wouldn't be a problem...

Would I buy the Instinct Solar again tomorrow? Maybe but as others point out you can score a used Instinct (V1, non-solar) for ~£50 and that's well worth it if you want to give the watch a whirl, pretty much all the same features and pretty good battery life still, that lets you decide if you like the size/shape and the UI before committing to a shiny new toy.

One thing I will say is I liked the standard Silicone strap it comes with at first, but found it slightly irritated my skin and ended up fitting a cheapo velcro type strap which I find much better, it's got 22mm lugs and it's worth playing with replacement straps.

No idea about the polar grit, it seems pretty good, but I'm a bit plumbed into the Garmin "Ecosystem" now.

It’s big selling point, even the non-solar variation if you pretty much never have to think about charging it. It lasts about 3-4 weeks as a watch, a couple of weeks if I log my commutes, and a week if I log two or three, 2-3 hour rides on it as well.

I've got a solar, and get 7 days out of the battery in the winter and 9-10 days in the summer, used to be a bit more but it's 2.5 years old now. Very rarely track rides/walks but do transmit heart rate to my edge unit pretty much every day.

It's a good watch, does everything I need and as above, is pretty tough!

that sounds like a battery drain problem, I have the mk1 solar instinct and its showing 10 days battery, hasn't been charged in two weeks and has recorded a couple of hikes as well.

@jonnyboi possibly but it's well out of warranty now. It usually shows 20 odd days when fully charged but I've never got anywhere close to that, just assumed it was normal.

One thing I will say is I liked the standard Silicone strap it comes with at first, but found it slightly irritated my skin and ended up fitting a cheapo velcro type strap which I find much better, it’s got 22mm lugs and it’s worth playing with replacement straps.

+1, seems to be a random problem for some people, might be salt/sweat, might be the plastic.

I've got a cheap leather strap and a elastic fabric one from ebay with the garmin quick connect ends on them. Makes it much more comfortable to wear. I got the fabric one for doing sports but the fake leather seems to cope well enough I rarely bother.

Review of the grit here. I've not used the Instinct, some people noted some garmin/polar comparisons in the comments:

https://singletrackmag.com/tech/2022/07/polar-grit-x-watch-review/

@jonnyboi possibly but it’s well out of warranty now. It usually shows 20 odd days when fully charged but I’ve never got anywhere close to that, just assumed it was normal.

I briefly had the battery drain issue, apparently it's due to it doing 'something' in the background, the fix was one or two hard restarts not powering it off like normal just holding in the top left button for ~30 seconds till it goes off, waiting a bit then turning it back on.

Actually thinking about it we've all probably made the instinct sound like an awesome product (and it is) but maybe glossed over some of it's flaws, the battery drain issue is one (seems to have been fixed in later firmware?) But there also the altimeter. The altimeter is basically bobbins, the sensor port is in the wrong place so it picks up random movement of you sweaty wrist and turns those into massive changes in altitude. Again they've tried to fix that by firmware to smooth out spikes/dips in pressure, but it's of limited effect, I just fix elevation data in Strava after upload, but its minor pain...

I don't know if either of these is fully fixed on the instinct 2, I think the altimeter port has been moved, and you'd hope the F/W has been updated to manage battery better and prevent unnecessary drain.

It's still overall the best device I've had from Garmin (but I've not had a Fenix)...

I briefly had the battery drain issue, apparently it’s due to it doing ‘something’ in the background, the fix was one or two hard restarts not powering it off like normal just holding in the top left button for ~30 seconds till it goes off, waiting a bit then turning it back on.

I do this before every charge, makes no difference to battery life unfortunately.